This volume contains twenty-five selected papers of the 2008 congress of the Society of Oriental Liturgy held in Rome. The Society is a non-confessional scholarly association dedicated to the study of Eastern Christian worship, founded at its first congress in Eichstatt, Germany in 2006. The Society's scope and purpose is to foster that study in all its aspects, such as the origins of Eastern liturgy, history, current practice, theology, and spirituality. The field includes related disciplines, such as hymnography, architecture, iconography, and their multiple methodologies. This volume shows the great variety of the field in question and brings to light new interesting and relevant research results by scholars working in Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas. The papers deal with, inter alia, the Armenian, Coptic, Ethiopian, Georgian, Greek, Russian, Serbian, Syriac, and Ukrainian ritual-liturgical traditions, their development, and their meaning.